Critic Reviews

There are no grand moments, enormous revelations or manipulatively overpowering scores in his delicately constructed and produced film — it is as narratively straightforward as movies come.

There’s nothing showy about Amrum, but it can leave an audience shaken. Akin has fashioned a rare film that relies on the power of simplicity to tell a story that is anything but simple.

Amrum is something of a departure for Akin, the kind of precision miniature work that can be achieved on a smaller canvas.

Amrum is a stirring example of how childhood reminiscence can stand for so much more.

Can a brainwashed boy in Hitler Youth learn to stop worrying and love being a Nazi hater? Beautifully directed by Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin, this unexpectedly tender mesmerizer has an answer you won’t see coming

That measured approach, exemplified in star Billerbeck’s arresting simplicity and the many fine supporting turns around him, allows us to clock Nanning’s growing awareness of what matters to others, what’s impossible to ignore and how to interpret an unjust world that’s still full of beauty and kindness if you know where to look. Which, of course, includes inside himself.

The new film is both Akin’s strongest and, with its stately, picturesque classicism, his least characteristic work in some time.

The film works so well because of the development and portrayal of Nanning. He’s such a compelling character, slowly uncovering his family’s moral failings as the film progresses. He displays an inherent empathy for the world around him.

There’s no outright preaching, no plea to condemn or sympathize either way. What unfolds is far more complex, morally speaking, even if the bones of the narrative and how it’s shot are deliberately pared down.

What does it mean to lose faith in one’s role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It’s a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness.